An Australian woman on trial for murder says she threw up the toxic mushroom meal which killed her relatives, after binge eating dessert.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to four charges – three of murder and one of attempted murder – over the beef Wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July 2023.

Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson deliberately served toxic death cap mushrooms, but only to her guests. Her defence team say the contaminated meal was a tragic accident, and argue it had made their client sick too.

Ms Patterson told the court she had only eaten a small part of lunch but later consumed two-thirds of a cake, before becoming “over-full” and vomiting.

Doctors have previously told the trial Ms Patterson did not have the same intense symptoms as the other people who’d eaten at her house.

On her third day of wide-ranging testimony, Ms Patterson also admitted she had lied about a cancer diagnosis – which prosecutors say she used to coax the guests to her house – instead of revealing she was actually planning to undergo weight-loss surgery.

She said she had dumped a food dehydrator and wiped her phone in the days after the incident out of fear of being blamed for her relative’s deaths, telling the court her estranged husband had accused her of poisoning them.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

A single lunch guest survived, 71-year-old local pastor Ian Wilkinson, after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The Victorian Supreme Court trial – which started almost six weeks ago – has heard from more than 50 witnesses, and attracted huge global attention.

In the Morwell courthouse, Ms Patterson gave a detailed account of the fatal lunch, saying she had invited her guests under the premise she wanted to talk about health issues.

The 14-member jury heard that Ms Patterson went through “quite a long process of trying to decide what to cook” for the lunch before choosing to make beef Wellington.

The dish – usually prepared with a long strip of fillet steak, wrapped in pastry and mushrooms – was something Ms Patterson’s mother made when she was a child, to mark special occasions, she said.

After deciding the mushrooms she’d prepared tasted “bland”, she said she’d added some dried ones – bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne months earlier – from a container in her pantry.

Asked if that container may have had other types of mushrooms in it, Ms Patterson, choking up, said: “Now I think there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had started hunting for mushrooms in locations close to her Leongatha home in 2020, and her long-standing love for fungi had expanded to include wild varieties as they had “more flavour”.

Ms Patterson told the jury she had served up the food when it was ready, and instructed her guests to grab a plate themselves as she finished preparing gravy.

There were no assigned seats or plates, she said.

Mr Wilkinson previously told the trial the guests had each been given grey plates while Ms Patterson had eaten off an orange one. Ms Patterson on Wednesday said she didn’t have any grey plates.

During the lunch, Ms Patterson recalled that she didn’t eat much of her food – “a quarter, a third, somewhere around there” – because she was busy talking.

She conceded she had told her guests she had cancer, but in court explained she told this lie to make sure she had help with childcare when she underwent gastric bypass surgery.

“I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I was going to have done. I was really embarrassed by it,” she said.

After the guests left, she cleaned up the kitchen and ate a slice of orange cake Gail had brought.

“[I ate] another piece of cake, and then another piece,” she said, before finishing the rest of the dessert.

“I felt sick… over-full so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.”

“After I’d done that, I felt better.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had secretly struggled with bulimia since her teens and was prone to regularly binge eating and vomiting after meals.

Ms Patterson told the court that she started to develop gastro-like symptoms hours after the lunch and took herself to hospital to “get some fluids” two days later. She was “shocked but confused” when medical staff asked if she could have eaten death cap mushrooms.

While in hospital for observation overnight, Ms Patterson said her former husband Simon asked her about a dehydrator she owned.

“Is that how you poisoned my parents?” she told the trial he’d said to her – something Mr Patterson denies.

After this encounter, she’d been “frantic”, Ms Patterson said, and upon being sent home had disposed of her food dehydrator at the local tip.

“I had made the meal and served it and people had got sick.”

“I was scared that they would blame me for it.”

The court also heard that Ms Patterson erased the data on one of her phones several times – including while police were searching her house – because she did not want detectives to see her photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator.

Ms Patterson will continue giving evidence on Thursday, before prosecutors will have the opportunity to cross-examine her.

A 22-year-old man has been arrested in Pakistan and confessed to the murder of 17-year-old social media influencer Sana Yousaf, according to police.

Authorities say they believe Umar Hayat murdered Ms Yousaf at her home in Islamabad on Monday after she rejected what they called his “offers of friendship”. He allegedly also repeatedly tried, and failed, to meet her.

They say he broke into her home, fired two shots, stole her phone and fled.

Ms Yousaf’s father, Syed Yousaf Hassan, told the BBC she was his only daughter, and was “very brave”. Her family have gathered in Chitral, where Ms Yousaf has been buried.

Mr Yousaf said she had never mentioned Hayat, nor any threatening behaviour, before she was killed.

He said Ms Yousaf’s aunt was at the family home when the suspect broke in, and that he had also threatened to shoot her before fleeing.

Ms Yousaf died before she could be taken to the hospital.

Police said the “brutal” murder caused “a wave of concern” across the country, and that there was “immense” pressure to find the killer.

They raided locations across the capital and the province of Punjab and scanned footage from 113 CCTV cameras.

The suspected murder weapon and Ms Yousaf’s phone have since been recovered.

Ms Yousaf already had a wide following in Pakistan, with half a million fans on Instagram before her death. Condolences have flooded her social media pages.

Her TikTok account gained hundreds of thousands of followers overnight, and now stands at more than a million.

Her last video on Instagram, posted last week, showed her surrounded by balloons and cutting a cake for her birthday.

Given her high profile in Pakistan, news of Ms Yousaf’s death spread quickly in local news media and on social media platforms. It’s also ignited a fierce debate about women on social media.

While many have shared their outrage at news of Ms Yousaf’s death, there has also been backlash towards her work as an influencer.

Digital rights advocacy group Bolo Bhi has been monitoring the online reaction, and its director Usama Khilji said such criticism had been coming from a small portion of mostly male internet users – some of whom have cited religious grounds.

“They’re asking why she was putting up all this content, and even suggesting the family should take down her Instagram and TikTok accounts because they add to her ‘sins’,” Mr Khilji explained.

Dr Farzana Bari, a prominent human rights activist, argued the reaction is “misogynistic” and “patriarchal”.

She said Ms Yousaf had “her own voice”, and that the discourse online is a reminder that social media has become a “very threatening place for female content creators” in Pakistan.

The Inspector General of Police for Islamabad, Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi, said women who choose to become social media influencers “deserve our encouragement and support”. He added Ms Yousaf’s murder was “tragic”.

Dr Bari said authorities condemning the incident publicly was a positive sign that could lead to change.

The arrested suspect is the son of a former public servant. He is from the town of Faisalabad, in the province of Punjab, according to police.

Two Chinese nationals have been accused of smuggling a fungus into the US that officials describe as a “dangerous biological pathogen”.

Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, have been charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods, false statements, and visa fraud, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced on Tuesday.

The complaint alleges Mr Liu tried to smuggle the fungus through Detroit airport so he could study it at a University of Michigan laboratory where his girlfriend, Ms Jian, worked.

The fungus called Fusarium graminearum can cause a disease in wheat, barley, maize and rice that can wipe out crops and lead to vomiting and liver damage if it gets into food.

The fungus is described in scientific literature as a “potential agroterrorism weapon”, according to the US Attorney’s Office, adding it is responsible for “billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.”

Officials further allege Ms Jian received funding from the Chinese government for her research on the pathogen in China. They also claim she is a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

United States Attorney Jerome F Gorgon Jr described the allegations as of the “gravest national security concerns”.

“These two aliens have been charged with smuggling a fungus that has been described as a ‘potential agroterrorism weapon’ into in the [sic] heartland of America, where they apparently intended to use a University of Michigan laboratory to further their scheme.”

The investigation was a joint effort between the FBI and US Customs and Border Protection.

Ms Jian is due to appear in court in Detroit, Michigan on Tuesday.

The University of Michigan said in a statement to the BBC that it “has received no funding from the Chinese government in relation to research conducted by the accused individuals”.

University officials are cooperating with law enforcement on the investigation and they “strongly condemn any actions that seek to cause harm, threaten national security or undermine the university’s critical public mission”, according to the statement.

Spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington DC Liu Pengyu told the BBC that he is not familiar with this specific case, but emphasized that Beijing “has always required overseas Chinese citizens to abide by local laws and regulations and will also resolutely safeguard their legitimate rights and interests”.

The charges come amid strained relations between the US and China, and just days after the Trump administration vowed to “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese nationals studying in the US.

Beijing also said Washington “severely violated” a trade truce reached in Geneva last month, when both countries lowered tariffs on goods imported from each other.

Earlier this week, a Chinese student at the University of Michigan was charged for illegally voting in the 2024 election.

An Australian woman on trial for murder says she threw up the toxic mushroom meal which killed her relatives, after binge eating dessert.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to four charges – three of murder and one of attempted murder – over the beef Wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July 2023.

Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson deliberately served toxic death cap mushrooms, but only to her guests. Her defence team say the contaminated meal was a tragic accident, and argue it had made their client sick too.

Ms Patterson told the court she had only eaten a small part of lunch but later consumed two-thirds of a cake, before becoming “over-full” and vomiting.

Doctors have previously told the trial Ms Patterson did not have the same intense symptoms as the other people who’d eaten at her house.

On her third day of wide-ranging testimony, Ms Patterson also admitted she had lied about a cancer diagnosis – which prosecutors say she used to coax the guests to her house – instead of revealing she was actually planning to undergo weight-loss surgery.

She said she had dumped a food dehydrator and wiped her phone in the days after the incident out of fear of being blamed for her relative’s deaths, telling the court her estranged husband had accused her of poisoning them.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

A single lunch guest survived, 71-year-old local pastor Ian Wilkinson, after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The Victorian Supreme Court trial – which started almost six weeks ago – has heard from more than 50 witnesses, and attracted huge global attention.

In the Morwell courthouse, Ms Patterson gave a detailed account of the fatal lunch, saying she had invited her guests under the premise she wanted to talk about health issues.

The 14-member jury heard that Ms Patterson went through “quite a long process of trying to decide what to cook” for the lunch before choosing to make beef Wellington.

The dish – usually prepared with a long strip of fillet steak, wrapped in pastry and mushrooms – was something Ms Patterson’s mother made when she was a child, to mark special occasions, she said.

After deciding the mushrooms she’d prepared tasted “bland”, she said she’d added some dried ones – bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne months earlier – from a container in her pantry.

Asked if that container may have had other types of mushrooms in it, Ms Patterson, choking up, said: “Now I think there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had started hunting for mushrooms in locations close to her Leongatha home in 2020, and her long-standing love for fungi had expanded to include wild varieties as they had “more flavour”.

Ms Patterson told the jury she had served up the food when it was ready, and instructed her guests to grab a plate themselves as she finished preparing gravy.

There were no assigned seats or plates, she said.

Mr Wilkinson previously told the trial the guests had each been given grey plates while Ms Patterson had eaten off an orange one. Ms Patterson on Wednesday said she didn’t have any grey plates.

During the lunch, Ms Patterson recalled that she didn’t eat much of her food – “a quarter, a third, somewhere around there” – because she was busy talking.

She conceded she had told her guests she had cancer, but in court explained she told this lie to make sure she had help with childcare when she underwent gastric bypass surgery.

“I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I was going to have done. I was really embarrassed by it,” she said.

After the guests left, she cleaned up the kitchen and ate a slice of orange cake Gail had brought.

“[I ate] another piece of cake, and then another piece,” she said, before finishing the rest of the dessert.

“I felt sick… over-full so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.”

“After I’d done that, I felt better.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had secretly struggled with bulimia since her teens and was prone to regularly binge eating and vomiting after meals.

Ms Patterson told the court that she started to develop gastro-like symptoms hours after the lunch and took herself to hospital to “get some fluids” two days later. She was “shocked but confused” when medical staff asked if she could have eaten death cap mushrooms.

While in hospital for observation overnight, Ms Patterson said her former husband Simon asked her about a dehydrator she owned.

“Is that how you poisoned my parents?” she told the trial he’d said to her – something Mr Patterson denies.

After this encounter, she’d been “frantic”, Ms Patterson said, and upon being sent home had disposed of her food dehydrator at the local tip.

“I had made the meal and served it and people had got sick.”

“I was scared that they would blame me for it.”

The court also heard that Ms Patterson erased the data on one of her phones several times – including while police were searching her house – because she did not want detectives to see her photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator.

Ms Patterson will continue giving evidence on Thursday, before prosecutors will have the opportunity to cross-examine her.

A 22-year-old man has been arrested in Pakistan and confessed to the murder of 17-year-old social media influencer Sana Yousaf, according to police.

Authorities say they believe Umar Hayat murdered Ms Yousaf at her home in Islamabad on Monday after she rejected what they called his “offers of friendship”. He allegedly also repeatedly tried, and failed, to meet her.

They say he broke into her home, fired two shots, stole her phone and fled.

Ms Yousaf’s father, Syed Yousaf Hassan, told the BBC she was his only daughter, and was “very brave”. Her family have gathered in Chitral, where Ms Yousaf has been buried.

Mr Yousaf said she had never mentioned Hayat, nor any threatening behaviour, before she was killed.

He said Ms Yousaf’s aunt was at the family home when the suspect broke in, and that he had also threatened to shoot her before fleeing.

Ms Yousaf died before she could be taken to the hospital.

Police said the “brutal” murder caused “a wave of concern” across the country, and that there was “immense” pressure to find the killer.

They raided locations across the capital and the province of Punjab and scanned footage from 113 CCTV cameras.

The suspected murder weapon and Ms Yousaf’s phone have since been recovered.

Ms Yousaf already had a wide following in Pakistan, with half a million fans on Instagram before her death. Condolences have flooded her social media pages.

Her TikTok account gained hundreds of thousands of followers overnight, and now stands at more than a million.

Her last video on Instagram, posted last week, showed her surrounded by balloons and cutting a cake for her birthday.

Given her high profile in Pakistan, news of Ms Yousaf’s death spread quickly in local news media and on social media platforms. It’s also ignited a fierce debate about women on social media.

While many have shared their outrage at news of Ms Yousaf’s death, there has also been backlash towards her work as an influencer.

Digital rights advocacy group Bolo Bhi has been monitoring the online reaction, and its director Usama Khilji said such criticism had been coming from a small portion of mostly male internet users – some of whom have cited religious grounds.

“They’re asking why she was putting up all this content, and even suggesting the family should take down her Instagram and TikTok accounts because they add to her ‘sins’,” Mr Khilji explained.

Dr Farzana Bari, a prominent human rights activist, argued the reaction is “misogynistic” and “patriarchal”.

She said Ms Yousaf had “her own voice”, and that the discourse online is a reminder that social media has become a “very threatening place for female content creators” in Pakistan.

The Inspector General of Police for Islamabad, Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi, said women who choose to become social media influencers “deserve our encouragement and support”. He added Ms Yousaf’s murder was “tragic”.

Dr Bari said authorities condemning the incident publicly was a positive sign that could lead to change.

The arrested suspect is the son of a former public servant. He is from the town of Faisalabad, in the province of Punjab, according to police.

Eleven people have been killed and dozens injured in a crush outside a cricket stadium in Bengaluru, which was hosting a victory parade to celebrate the home team’s Indian Premier League win, the state’s chief minister said.

Thousands of people had lined the streets on Wednesday to welcome the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) who beat the Punjab Kings in the IPL cricket final the day before.

Karnataka state Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told reporters that authorities had not expected the number of people who had turned out.

One police official told the BBC more than 200,000 people came out for the victory parade but they had anticipated only half that amount.

When the tragedy struck, the gates of the stadium “were not even opened, but there were so many people trying to push through a small gate that the stampede took place,” an official said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the “mishap in Bengaluru is heartrending” adding that his “thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones”.

State Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said he was “deeply shocked by the tragic loss of lives”.

“A moment of joy has been eclipsed by sorrow,” he added.

The RCB team had arrived by a special flight at the old HAL airport to be received by Karnataka Deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar. They were taken in a procession to the hotel.

This was a precursor for the reception on the steps of the majestic Vidhana Soudha, seat of the state legislature, where Governor Thawarchand Gehlot, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and other ministers met the team.

The team was then scheduled to drive, again, in a procession to the stadium before the crush occurred.

Prior to the incident, masses of people from different parts of the city had moved towards the stadium on all modes of transport wearing RCB jerseys.

Metro trains were so packed that several people – including this reporter – were not able to enter any compartment. All this while passengers inside the train and outside chanted the team’s name in chorus.

Auto rickshaws and taxis did not respond to requests from people who wanted to be dropped anywhere near the stadium. Those who agreed dropped commuters several kilometres away.

After reports of people losing their lives in the crush spread, people started rushing away to metro stations.

Authorities shut down the stations around the stadium as huge crowds had gathered on the platforms.

The BBC has rejected incorrect White House criticism of its Gaza coverage, describing a claim that it had taken down a story as “completely wrong”.

At Tuesday’s White House briefing President Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the BBC of taking “the word of Hamas” when reporting on the number of people killed in a shooting near an aid distribution site on Sunday.

She also claimed, wrongly, that the BBC had retracted a story.

“The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong. We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism,” the BBC said in a statement.

Karoline Leavitt criticised the BBC for changing the number of casualties in the story’s headline. The corporation said its coverage was updated with new figures throughout the day, which is “totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story”.

The numbers were “always clearly attributed, from the first figure of 15 from medics, through the 31 killed from the Hamas-run health ministry to the final Red Cross statement of ‘at least 21’ at their field hospital,” the statement said.

There are conflicting reports on what happened near an aid distribution centre in Rafah on Sunday.

Civilian witnesses, NGOs, and health officials said people were shot at while waiting for food at an aid distribution point. But the Israeli military said the reports were false, and denied that its troops fired at civilians near or within the site. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US and Israel-backed group which now runs the aid distribution, said the reports were “outright fabrications”.

Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, into Gaza, making verifying what is happening in the territory difficult.

On Tuesday, there was a similar incident when local officials said Israeli forces fired at civilians as they attempted to collect aid, killing at least 27 people.

The IDF said its troops fired shots after identifying what it described as suspects who moved towards them “deviating from the designated access routes”.

The White House press secretary also accused the BBC of removing a story because it “couldn’t find any evidence of anything” – referring to a report by BBC Verify examining a viral video.

In its statement the BBC explained that this report on Monday, which examined the footage, found that “a viral video posted on social media was not linked to the aid distribution centre it claimed to show”. But the video did not run on BBC news channels, and did not inform its reporting.

“Conflating these two stories is simply misleading. It is vital to bring people the truth about what is happening in Gaza. International journalists are not currently allowed into Gaza and we would welcome the support of the White House in our call for immediate access,” the BBC’s statement added.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 54,470 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 4,201 since Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.